WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia, is leading a group of eight House Republican freshmen in returning a total of $1.4 million in leftover money from their 2011 office accounts and asking Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that it be used to help pay down the national debt.

The Times-Picayune/Jonathan TiloveRep. Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia, speaks at a press conference Wednesday announcing that he and other freshman Republicans are returning unspent money from their 2011 office accounts and asking that it be used to pay down the national debt.

"It doesn't take an Ivy League mathematician to do the math," said Landry, who is giving back $160,000, or 12 percent of his member's representational allowance for last year. "My Cajun math is clear -- if each House office, Senate office and government agency saved the 12 percent my colleagues and I have done today, we can put a dent in the debt."

Landry and his colleagues acknowledge that the amount of money they are returning is small change compared with the vastness of the debt, but said they are making a larger point.

While it is not uncommon for members to return unspent money, Landry said calling attention to what they are doing is a demonstration of the power of positive "penny-pinching."

"You save a hundred pennies you get a dollar. You save a hundred dollars, you get $100, a hundred-dollar bill," he said. "It all adds up."

In addition to holding a news conference outside the Capitol on an unseasonably warm day, the eight members sent a letter to Boehner asking that the money they return be treated as a "gift to reduce the debt held by the public," a legal designation.

View full sizeManuel Balce Ceneta, The Associated PressRep. Jeff Landry, right, joins other U.S. House Republicans at a news conference on using their excess office funds to reduce the public debt. From left are Joe Walsh of Illinois, Kevin Yoder of Kansas, Steve Southerland of Florida, Raul Labrador of Idaho and Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina. February 1 2012

They wrote the speaker: "We understand that regular order prescribes the unused portions of our MRAs (member's representational allowance) to languish in a shared fund for two years before being transferred to the Treasury," and asked for Boehner's support for legislation to change that.

Asked why it is less than clear where the money they returned would otherwise end up, Landry said, "I've learned in Washington that to think something would be common sense or would operate under the normal business practices or be subject to the same principles as the American family budget do not apply here in Washington."

The speaker's spokesman, Michael Steel, said, "Boehner applauds these members' commitment to cutting government spending and reducing the deficit. He returns money from his congressional office budget every year." He said the speaker would be happy to look at legislation to direct unused spending by members to debt reduction. He also noted that since Boehner took the speaker's gavel, the House has reduced its own budget by nearly 10 percent.

Landry agreed that the House, in reducing its office spending across the board, was "leading by example."

Landry said the idea of Wednesday's press conference was born with members in the cloakroom comparing notes on how much each of them was going to return from their office accounts and the thought arose, "Why don't we just all return it together; I think it makes a better bang for the buck."

"My colleagues and I voted against the disastrous Washington debt deal and the failure Super Committee," Landry said. Landry and the others also said that cutting their office spending had not adversely affected the quality of their constituent service or the performance of other congressional responsibilities.